


Million Dollar Weapon

by syrupwit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug Addiction, Handwavey Alien Tech Stuff, Mental Health Issues, Other, Pre-Iron Man 1, Taking Serious Liberties Here, The Symbiote Is Not A Metaphor, Venom-Typical Cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19407259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: Tony meets an alien and goes on a bender. Or maybe it's the other way around.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "[Teenage Wildlife](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yhd_qhIr2g)" by David Bowie.

The voice in his head says, **_Tony._ **

“That’s me,” he says, or tries to say. His mouth is too dry to make words; his tongue shapes them, scrapes them against his palate, but can’t push them out. His body feels at once leaden and weightless. There’s a curious ringing in his ears.

**_Tony, we need you to trust us._ **

“What?” he manages, grinding the side of his face into what feels like gritty sand. His legs, he imagines, are broken.

He remembers the explosion. A second in midair, being thrown from the car. Before and after that, it’s blank. Dark. Nothing to go on.

**_Danger coming. Trust us. Hold on._ **

“I don’t know who you are.”

**_You know us. Now hold on._ **

“I don’t—” he gets out, but suddenly his broken limbs are twisting, are pulled into a crouch, and he’s running, leaping, hurtling into empty air. Then he’s flailing, falling out of control, sharp rocks rushing up to meet him as he goes—

He thinks, _At least it was only my third favorite car._

-

**APPROXIMATELY TWO WEEKS AGO AND A HANDFUL OF MILES AWAY**

Obadiah calls just as Tony has decided to call his CA sponsor, which turns out not to matter because the guy just OD’d. Tony himself is on his third relapse in as many months, freshly discharged from a 5150 hold and waiting to be picked up at a seaside facility built more like a resort than a hospital.

He went through a sponsor collecting phase about a year ago—Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, that enterprising young cult in Venice Beach that claims to unteach your self-defeating habits with animated fractals—and although none of it has helped or lasted, not the sponsors or the meetings or the free promotional literature, he’s damn sure he can’t trust himself alone right now. So it’s lucky that Obie calls.

“You’ll love it,” says Obie, voice rounding as he likely puffs on a cigar. Tony is sick of the smell of tobacco. The hospital might have an ocean view, but the only way to see it is from the smoking patio. He’s not sure what he’ll love, because Obie’s voice keeps blurring into noise. Something about an island.

“Sure,” says Tony. He likes islands, the further away the better. Last night the nurse gave him barbiturates, which was new for him actually, and his body is lagging an extra step or two behind his brain. What’s left of his brain. Get the calipers.

“Hang in there, champ,” says Obie out the side of his mouth. Tony closes his eyes and sees Obie’s eyes crinkling; thinks of his hand on Tony’s shoulder, heavy arm across Tony’s back. Tar on Obie’s breath when he leans to speak in Tony’s ear. The seizure pads on the hospital cot. The sun beats down hard on the nape of his neck, and he can catch a hint of salt breeze if he turns his head just so.

Tony’s car pulls up a minute later. He tosses the phone to the new driver while Obie’s still on, jawing away about meteorites and underwater laboratories. He has no suitcases to load, just a bag that fits between the minibar and one end of the sofa.

Tony retrieves a pair of sunglasses—the admitting nurses had confiscated his, no idea why—and fixes himself a scotch and soda. To what he believes should be considered his credit, he doesn’t drink it until after they’ve pulled out of the hospital parking lot, a couple of miles from the freeway and a few dozen miles from home.

-

A decade and change ago, when this stuff was new enough that the people around Tony saw it as a behavioral blip or a quirk of his natural personality, there had been a great deal of discussion about moderation and restraint. He had been urged to master his impulses, interrogate his desires, take up yoga. He’d tried all of it. Kept trying, still tries. The only thing that’s stuck, besides the obvious, is the yoga.

Somewhere around his third stint in rehab, he’d realized that trying might not be enough.

People talk a lot about rock bottom. In Tony’s experience, there is no bottom. It’s more like a great, dark, bottomless pit. If you find the right place to jump and don’t get caught on the spikes around the edges, you can keep falling forever.

-

The same driver, new driver, takes Tony and Obie to the airport two days later. He is definitely eavesdropping while Tony tells Obie about his CA sponsor’s overdose. Tony misses Happy. He can’t blame him for leaving, given the circumstances, but he still misses him.

“Did you have a comment?” says Tony, meeting the driver’s eyes in the rearview. The driver blanches.

Obie says, “Tony, leave the guy alone.”

“I’m just giving him a chance to express his opinion.”

“You’re bullying him. Come on, he’s gotta watch the road.”

“It’s fine,” says the driver.

“See, he says it’s fine.”

“Tony,” says Obie in an undertone, because the little crack in Tony’s voice warns he’s going to start heckling the driver for real and they just hired this one last week. Tony has been crunching through staff like potato chips lately, but a week is still fast.

“It’s fine,” Tony repeats, smiling tightly. “Look, we’re almost there.”

LAX is a zoo on a good day. Today is not a good day. Tony convinces Obie to get out of the car a few terminals before their gate. The press has been waiting for Tony every single one of the handful of times he’s flown out of here in the past year; maybe they can miss the shitshow this time. He pretends not to watch as Obie tips the driver.

They don’t run into any journalists, but they barely make the flight. This is why they should have taken the private jet (despite what Obie’s contact insisted), but at least they don’t have to deal with boarding lines.

Tony was hungover yesterday, one of those nasty aching hangovers that tend to linger in his body for days. He orders drinks for them anyway, Manhattans, and filches Obie’s cherries from his glass. The vibration of the plane blends with the hum in his head, buzzing through the center of his bones.

He doesn’t remember passing out. He comes to somewhere over the Pacific. Obie is awake, charming the stewardess for coffee in a low voice. Sunlight bulges behind the window shades, piercing the cabin at intervals. Tony turns his head and goes momentarily blind with it.

At the Honolulu airport, he buys gifts for his surviving sponsors: kitchenware, art, a multitude of coated and flavored macadamia nuts. Obie must be aware that these purchases are meant to justify the case of duty-free local vodka he also buys, but he doesn’t comment.

Obie makes calls for the rest of the short layover, taking advantage of their status as the only passengers in the business lounge to convert it to his temporary office. He’s pissed at someone named Craig. Tony nods off briefly to the sound of his increasingly honeyed tones. The milder and more ingratiating Obie gets, the angrier you know he is.

“Still with us, kiddo?” he mutters to Tony at some point, while Craig, having finally grasped his position, babbles through increasingly frantic excuses for some screwup he made.

 _Unfortunately,_ Tony thinks, but he whispers, “Five more minutes, pop.”

Obie’s low, comforting chuckle vibrates through the seatrest between them.

Tony sleeps through the second plane. After that there’s a short ferry between islands, which leads to a third, smaller seaplane. Now is about when Tony would usually wheedle some grim-faced attendant or another to do shots with him, but today he sticks to the straight and narrow (also, the vodka has been packed away with the luggage). By the time they disembark, he’s nearly sober.

-

The island—technically an atoll—consists of a spit of rocky, unevenly forested land, horseshoe-bent around a shallow white sand lagoon that might be heartbreakingly beautiful in clearer weather. The sky is overcast, the muggy air stirred by sudden bursts of wind. No other land is visible on any side of the horizon.

At the beach, they’re greeted by a handful of standoffish plain clothes personnel who could be security or scientists. Obie ventures some small talk as they ride an open-air buggy to the base. He’s sweating, dark circles under the arms of his dress shirt. He still has a mini water bottle from the second plane.

Tony can’t keep his eyes open. Flying west always fucks with him. He and Obie have been traveling since mid-morning in California; it feels like it should be midnight, but it’s not even sundown. Ideally he’d get some rest before meeting their host, but their ride bypasses the circle of trailers that will likely serve as their accommodations in favor of heading for a low, flat concrete building that looks like a remnant from the Second World War.

The building is dark and stuffy within, barely cooler than outside. They are led from the entry to a narrow hallway lined with flickering lights. Somewhere distant, a pipe drips, noticeably echoing. It’s beginning to feel like the start of a horror movie—not that Tony can say much about that, as he isn't too interested in horror movies and thus hasn’t seen many.

Obie is valiantly attempting to keep a conversation going. The hallway curves around an unseen mass, a room or—Tony’s brain supplies the word “chamber”—before slanting down, the floor developing a slight incline. A fascinating whiff of mildew joins the mix of rust, concrete, and chemical smells. The air cools.

At the bottom of the passage, there’s an elevator.

“Uh, no,” Tony says out loud.

“Tony,” says Obie through his teeth.

“You first,” says Tony, and that’s how they end up traveling down in separate parties. Around three minutes into the slow, ominously clanky elevator ride, he supposes he might have made a poor choice.

-

Tony says, “Holy shit.”

The security-scientist or whoever next to him laughs, the first expression she’s made in front of him so far aside from stoic endurance. It isn’t a particularly nice laugh. He would protest, but he’s too busy being amazed. He leans over the lip of the balcony and tries not to gape.

The hall below him stretches three football fields long and half again as wide. Clear dividers accommodate dozens of workers, absorbed in arcane tasks, scrutinizing high-end computer displays, or conferring over spotless equipment whose purposes Tony can only guess at. The quality of tech here makes Stark Industries’ R&D department look like a cell phone kiosk at the mall. His hands itch in a way they haven’t for months, at least while sober.

Glass panels crisscross the walls and ceiling, providing glimpses of additional sections in the vast underwater laboratory as well as views of the dark ocean around them. Far above, though not visible at this depth, sunlight glistens over the thriving coral reef.

“Mr. Stark,” says someone at his elbow. He turns to face a gray-haired woman in a lab coat. The crows’ feet around her eyes crinkle when she smiles, and her handshake is reassuringly firm.

“I’m Leslie,” she offers. “Welcome to the Life Foundation. If you’ll follow me, we’re all very excited to show you what we have.”

-

The Life Foundation was founded during the Cold War by a loose association of survivalists, conspiracy theorists, and paranoid elites. Early projects included various failed longevity serums and an underground tunnel system in West Orange, NJ. Over the past four decades, the organization’s mission has evolved to encompass the preservation and advancement of the whole of human civilization, or so Leslie claims. It sounds a little cuckoo, not what Tony was expecting from a contact of Obie’s. If they weren’t ostensibly a thousand feet below sea level, he’d be out the door, cell phone kiosk or no.

The Life Foundation’s deal at the moment is salvaging alien technology. Apparently they get a lot of it out here in Oceanfuck Nowhere, dredged up from the bottom by currents or stowed away on meteorites. Tony notes distantly that he hasn’t said a word about the implied existence of aliens, and that Leslie doesn’t seem to have expected him to. It’s surreal, really, what a solid handshake and a half-day’s worth of jet lag can accomplish.

Though, Leslie assures him, their archives here hold a multiplicity of relevant and scientifically fascinating samples, the big thing here right now is something they’re calling the Artifact. They’ve only had it for a few months, and she can’t wait for Tony’s thoughts on it.

The scientists in the room where she leads him are very excited to see them. They want to show him the Artifact right away. Tony barrels through the introductions, shaking many hands, and lets himself be shown.

The Artifact is a dark blue object about the size of a baseball. It is shaped like a cup, or a bell, or possibly the beak of an octopus; consensus has not, and perhaps cannot, be determined regarding the exact form. Bumps protrude unevenly from the Artifact’s finely veined surface, which Tony is assured is inorganic in composition. When it is tilted in the light, behind the thick glass of the display area, an opalescent shimmer appears.

The Artifact is impermeable to heat, cold, lasers, sound, and all applications of force or cutting implements attempted so far. However, it is not inert. The scientists are happy to demonstrate.

Exposed to heat, the Artifact at first seems to spark, and then to pulse. Miniature lightning storms break out all over it, crackling with energy. As the temperature rises, the light show grows brighter, more frantic. The object starts to vibrate. Tony is aware, dimly, of a feeling like anxiety leaching through his hands.

The vibration grows almost alarming. But then some threshold is reached, some safeguard is triggered, because the vibration steadies and the lights freeze in place. They fade like that, the branching patterns flaring for just an instant before they’re snuffed out.

“Wow,” says Tony, because they’re all looking at him. The room erupts into discussion.

-

Eventually he begs off, citing exhaustion, and he’s relieved to find that the vodka made it to his uncomfortably sterile underwater suite. Obie, housed next door, has already donned pajamas. Tony says his good nights, unearths a glass from the guest bar, and prepares for six to twelve hours of chemically aided oblivion.

Best laid plans, as they say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to my boyfriend A.P. for pointing out the subconscious reference here to “[Orange Water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjcZjYiNwP4)” by GDP.
> 
> This story is massively self-indulgent, loosely plotted so far, and not based on anything in particular.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s burning.

He’s dying. They’re dying, and it’s his fault.

Flames bite his skin, crackling, searing. The smoke around him smells dead already. He’s in indescribable pain, every second more unbearable than the last. He can’t dull sensation the way he usually would, can’t offer even that small respite. He has to writhe with it, sit through it, live in it, for as long as living lasts.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thinks. And: _I wasn’t enough._

_I failed._

_I couldn’t protect you._

The flames flare suddenly, and the crumbling thing around him screams in agony—

-

“Tony, wake up.”

Tony surfaces from the dream, gasping, to find Obie at his bedside, along with the mostly empty bottle of vodka that he fuzzily recalls leaving on the floor last night. His heart is beating double time.

“Nightmares again?”

“No, I,” Tony takes a deep breath and lets it out deliberately. His limbs are still tingling; Obie’s hand on his arm feels like a vise. “I think I was seizing.”

“Aw, shit.” Obie lets go of Tony’s arm and covers his own face. “You gotta stop drinking, kid.”

“You first.” Tony takes another slow, experimental breath and reaches for a water bottle. “What time is it?”

It’s too early to work, so Tony kills time by wandering everywhere he can access. Hallways wind from an elevator bay, past their guest suites, to what seems to be an observation deck, or would if the walls weren’t dark and shuttered. With the extreme pressure at these depths, it makes sense that the windows are so thickly armored. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t panic him a little.

Something is wrong. Whether it’s an aftereffect of the seizure, a symptom of spending the night underwater, part of his hangover, or a combination of the aforementioned, Tony feels unmoored, barely hanging on. It’s not just balance issues or nausea or exhaustion, or the sparks that fizz behind his eyes when he so much as tilts his head; it’s something different, a feeling outside of him, a current in the recycled air.

“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor,” says Obie, when he finds Tony pacing figure eights by the elevator. “Imagine that headline. Why don’t you go back to bed, try to get some sleep?”

“I thought this was supposed to be a vacation,” says Tony. “A change of pace. You said, and I quote, ‘You’re gonna love it.’ Well, you know what, Obie? I am not loving it. I am not loving being stuck thousands of feet under the ocean in a secret lab run by a cult that worships aliens.”

Obie spreads his hands palm-out in supplication. “They undersold the alien part. Look, I’m not thrilled either. But we’re here, so why not make the best of it?”

Tony’s response is interrupted by the _ding_ of the elevator. Leslie steps out, flanked by a pair of security-scientists and—yep, that’s a wheelie robot with a breakfast tray. Oh boy.

“Great, you’re up!” says Leslie. “Why don’t we move this to the observation deck?”

The deck shutters slide open to views of dark, vast ocean. They dine on a surprisingly fresh buffet spread: fruit, congee, thick white toast with coconut jam, sausage, scrambled eggs, chilled juice in sealed cups. The robot serves rich coffee folded with sweetened condensed milk.

Tony cradles his coffee like a pet, blowing steam to soothe it. He is scattered, can’t join the flow of conversation or take more than a few bites. Obie makes up for it like he always does; keeps them smiling, clears his plate. Obie likes the toast. He’s a bread guy.

Leslie briefs them on the day’s agenda. There are lab areas to tour and demonstrations to attend. Some of it is alien stuff—they claim to have wreckage samples, armor, some kind of handheld weapon—and some is normal just-this-side-of-fringe science, like regenerative elixir. One guy has a garden. The strawberries at breakfast are from it.

Tony has bluffed his way through longer ordeals that required more active engagement on his part. He’s steeling himself for eight hours of squinting through sunglasses, ducking into bathrooms whenever possible, and internally counting deep breaths. But then one of the scientists gestures too emphatically, or the wheelie robot’s internal cooling fans whirr a little too loudly, or he turns his head and catches a whiff of the sausage, that slightly burnt meat smell—

 _Dead dead dead_ —

Tony catches himself just before he vomits.

“Obie,” he says under his breath, voice steady. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

-

Obie is not happy. But Tony and his coffee and his queasy, dizzy body get to go back to sleep while the tour proceeds as planned.

-

Tony’s second sleep is dreamless. He wakes up feeling significantly less awful, though still not quite right. That’s fine; he hasn’t felt right in years. He drinks the cold coffee and two bottles of water. He checks his phone.

No service down here, obviously. But he has Tetris, Snake III, Lemonade Tycoon, as many blurry images of projects and diagrams as the device’s memory can hold, saved texts and voicemails…

Rhodey’s last voicemail sits in his inbox, unopened. He never listened to it. One minute and thirty-one seconds. Tony stares at his phone, considering.

Aw, fuck it. But he’s got to be drunk for this.

He alternates gulps from the juice cups with nips of vodka, until the liquor burns low in his belly and he stops minding how it scalds his esophagus. Soon enough, the tension leaves his body, his vision blurs around the edges, and the world is bearable again. His mind feels expansive, receptive. He feels like he can face anything. It’s a lie, but it gets him where he wants to go.

He picks the phone back up. He presses play.

The robotic voicemail attendant announces a date and time around four months ago. The message starts with static, like Rhodey was in a car with the window down. Bluetooth, maybe. For a moment his voice is out of focus; then it’s clear, it’s him, and Tony always forgets how much younger he sounds on the phone:

“...swear to god this is the last straw, Tony. Yeah, I told you that six months ago. But you know what I’ve figured out since then? It doesn’t matter how many chances you get or how much you fuck up. Doesn’t matter what I do or anyone else does. Nothing’s going to happen until you decide it happens.”

Here Rhodey’s voice breaks. “You know I love you, man. But I can’t stand there and keep watching while you kill yourself. I can’t.”

A pause. Finally: “Let me know when you make your decision. But don’t call me before that.”

The message clicks off. Tony closes the phone.

He knocks back the rest of the last cup of juice. Then he takes up the bottle of vodka.

-

The first time Tony and Rhodey got drunk together, they were 22 and 23 respectively. Tony had sealed the deal on their budding friendship with a bottle of ancient, incredibly strong plum brandy excavated from the dwindling contents of Howard’s liquor cabinet. They had forced down a glass each before admitting defeat and going for something more palatable, then revisited the brandy once sufficiently fortified. Big mistake. They’d eventually passed out in blackout stupors on the back lawn, to be revived the next morning when Jarvis turned on the sprinklers. Nursing each other through the ensuing two-day hangover—on the same weekend they were supposed to present a joint project proposal to stakeholders, natch—had been a significant bonding experience. Thirteen years later, Tony still can’t smell ripe plums without wincing.

The last time Tony and Rhodey got drunk together, it was at a little tequila bar on Sunset Strip that served these insane $5 loaded nachos. Rhodey, freshly back from a mission, was quieter than usual, slower to banter. Tony had teased him about turning into an old man, pointed out the gray in his close-cropped hair, and he’d barely rolled his eyes. He’d left early, with half of his nachos to go. Square. Tony had stayed until closing.

The last time Rhodey saw Tony drunk—well. Tony would prefer not to think about it. He doesn’t have a functioning memory of the event, but he doesn’t need one. The footage is enough.

-

Somewhere around the dozenth time Tony replays the voicemail, he gets the idea to compose a response. He tries writing it out, switches to text, gets frustrated, and settles on recording a voice memo. But the dimensions of his room restrict his roving feet, and it’s not long before he’s pacing the hallway again, twirling the neck of the bottle in his fingers.

On a whim, he tries a door by the elevators. It's unlocked. He finds a chair to wedge it open and wanders in. There’s another hallway, then stairs down to a narrow passage. The lighting is poorer, the walls unfinished in places. Unintelligible wiring shows through in panels. When he presses a palm to the wall’s surface, it hums.

The passage twists, opening into a slightly wider passage. It’s a back entrance to some labs or something. The doors are marked in Braille. He makes an internal note to self: learn Braille.

The first four doors are locked. The fifth is a supply closet, illumined by a red safety light. The sixth is locked. The seventh is locked. The eighth yields to a retinal scan. And, okay, that’s a lab.

While Tony was distracted, his voice memo function has been running. He aborts the recording and starts a new one.

"Rhodes," he begins, then corrects himself. "James." He hears the slur in his words, the heaviness of his mouth around each syllable. "James Rhodes. Rhodey. Old man. Got your message. You're gonna be pissed, buddy. But I had to tell you...”

Wait, what did he have to tell Rhodey? He’s not sure. He forges on. “I’m out of the hospital. Got tons of stuff happening. Obie took me on a working vacation. Secret societies and shit, aliens.” Rhodey doesn’t believe in aliens. “Yeah, it’s crazy. I miss you.”

He blinks back unexpected tears. Goddammit. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he continues. “Anyway, that about wraps it up. I’ll call you again when I have it together, whenever that is.”

There. He stops the recording. Whoops, he sent a voice message. Doesn’t matter; no reception down here, after all. He’ll delete it before they return to the surface.

He takes a swig of his neglected vodka, shudders, and looks around the room. Pretty bare. There’s a table in the center, and some kind of apparatus that comes down from the ceiling, but otherwise—

**_Left._ **

Tony looks left of the table.

 **_No,_ ** **your** **_left._ **

Huh. There’s a box chained to the floor. It’s smooth pure white, like everything else in the room, but there’s a slight indent on the top.

**_Open it._ **

Why the fuck would he open a mysterious chained-up box in the middle of a secret cult lab on the ocean floor? There could be pathogens.

**_What._ **

You know, pathogens. Biological weapons, or maybe germs from outer space. Or just some crazy submarine mold on a boring experiment. He’s not blithe about risking it.

 **_The level of ethanol in your blood could_ ** **kill—** ** _never mind. No pathogens. Open it._ **

Tony finds his fingers prying at the indent before he knows it.

Then the world rocks on its hinges, and bursts open.

-

In the aftermath—among the blaring alarms and flashing lights, despite the imminence of doom pervading his every animal sense—Tony has one clear memory: his hand reaching for the Artifact’s scattered shards, and a shadow seeping out to meet him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up for some discussion of psychiatric medication and vivid descriptions of nausea in this chapter. Please let me know if you want me to tag anything in particular.

This is bad. This is really, really bad.  


From his vantage point on a counter above the water rushing into the lab, Tony assesses the scene. He struggles to recall evacuation protocols, emergency procedures, anything. He’s been in submarines before, obviously, but the last one was a while ago and kind of a party boat. Mirrored ceilings had been involved. Shag carpets. Who upholsters a submarine? Helpful train of thought he’s having.

At the rate that the room is flooding,Tony won’t make it to the nearest door before he’s submerged. Could he hold his breath and swim? His brain feels muddy. Fucking head trauma. Fucking booze. This probably qualifies by default as rock bottom, as in he’ll actually be on the bottom of the sea if he doesn’t escape this situation. The idea leaves him strangely calm.

Imagine the headlines, indeed. Rest in pieces, Tony Stark; swim with the fishes he drank like. Can’t buy, charm, or lie his way out of this one. Pearls that were his eyes, etc.  _ Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. _ At least three prominent political cartoonists are guaranteed to produce caricatures of Tony chatting up mermaids, and he’s not at all disappointed he won’t see them.

Tony is entertaining further whimsies about his imminent death when he looks up at the ceiling and notices the hatch almost directly above him.  


**_Finally._ **

Although his head is spinning and his body feels like a wad of overcooked spaghetti noodles, it’s surprisingly easy to pull the hatch down. It resists, as if locked, but something cracks when he pulls hard enough, and he can haul himself up through the gap. He emerges into a place between floors, a bubble of space bounded by another hatch, which leads to a second chamber with a ladder leading up a long, dark passageway. He replaces the first hatch as best he can, slams the second shut after him, and starts to climb.

It’s strange going. Tony’s balance is off, and the ladder shakes, pressured from without. Muffled alarms are going off, loudspeaker announcements vibrating through the wall. He climbs for what seems like hours, or possibly not very long at all.  


At last he reaches a landing, and from there the next floor. He drags the door open and steps into chaos. Security-scientists rush every which way, shouting at each other and carrying things, frantic to save as much work as they can. Emergency lights flash. Tony’s head hurts.

“Tony!” It’s Obie, grabbing Tony’s shoulder and pulling him into a tight, one-armed hug. He grimaces at the blood on Tony’s face and clothing. “Where the hell have you been? No one could find you.”

Tony can’t help but sag against him. “Went exploring. What’s going on?”

“Everyone has to evacuate. They’re saying we were hit from space.”  


“What?"

“It was another meteorite or something. I almost told that gal Leslie, there must be some pretty major design flaws if a bitty little rock can bring the whole place down, but it didn’t seem like the time.”

**_Not a meteorite._ **

“It wasn’t a meteorite.” Tony doesn’t know how he knows this, but suddenly he does, beyond a shadow of a doubt. “It was a deliberate strike. Someone wanted to destroy the Life Foundation, either because of what they’re doing here or because of what they have.”

Obie peers at Tony, sniffs, frowns. “Jesus, you’re three sheets to the wind again.”  


“I’m serious, Obie. I think there’s something big going on here, bigger than anyone knows.”

“Let’s get back on dry land and sober you up, and then we can talk.”

Tony doesn’t resist as Obie hustles him into the stream of security-scientists, but he keeps talking. “I found this thing in the lab, Obie. This really weird thing. I’m not—I wasn’t that drunk. You gotta believe me.”

“Okay, champ.” Obie steers him toward a group of people milling by the elevators. He raises his voice. “Hey! This man is injured. Get him out of here.” Some of them start, springing into action.  


“I’ll see you on the surface,” he adds to Tony in an undertone, and then Tony is hustled away.

-

The Life Foundation has escape pods. Tony is trapped inside one of them, hundreds of feet deep in the ocean, ascending to the surface at a rate that is objectively rapid but feels snail-slow. He is also, coincidentally, having a panic attack.

Eyes squeezed shut, Tony forces himself to breathe. The sound echoes harshly in the cramped vessel.  _ In, out. In, out. _ He concentrates on the rhythm, willing his measured breaths to drown out the jolting of his heart. He tries to relax his clenched fists, his gritted jaw.  


He could be anywhere: outer space, a sensory deprivation tank, his bedroom at home. In the dark, he feels weightless, impossible. It swamps him, swallows him, fills around him and whittles down. He imagines a light going out. He imagines a snuffed candle and the wick smudged to ash. Still black water. Suffocation.

**_Calm._ **

Tony gulps for air. Fear floods his spine. He hears his breath get loud and ragged, and he digs his nails into his palms, frantic to hold onto something solid. He bites his cheek and draws blood. Patterns dance on the insides of his eyelids.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees warm, glistening darkness coiled around his knees, wriggling against the confines of the escape pod.

Tony screams.

-

By the time he reaches the surface, he’s delirious, ranting about tentacle monsters and Threats From Beyond. Obie takes one look at him and radios for the jet.

He doesn’t remember the flight home. 

-

Tony’s second psychiatric hospital stay in a week goes better than the first, from a certain point of view. He’s too sedated to do much but sleep. He wakes up long enough to swallow his handful of meds, and that’s it. He naps through group activities. He nods off during meetings with his counselor. He dozes through the drive back from the hospital.

He doesn’t talk to anyone about meteorites, or space, or the Life Foundation. He doesn’t talk to anyone about the darkness he saw.

At home, his answering machine is overwhelmed with messages. Stacks of neatly sorted mail crowd the coffee table. Half the contents of his fridge are expired—somebody’s been slacking off—but he can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t even feel like drinking. He just sits on the couch, occasionally mumbling at J.A.R.V.I.S., and washes down risperidone and limited benzodiazepines with swigs of protein shake.

Rhodey shows up on the second day. Tony is lying on his back on the living room carpet, skimming a memo from Legal that has become no less illegible over the past hour. He assumes that anyone the security system lets in must be an assistant, and thus doesn’t bother to look up when the door opens.

“In here,” he calls. “I’m fine, just work around me.”  


Familiar footsteps approach. A figure pauses in the threshold above him. “Hey, Tony.”

Tony twists up to stare, self-conscious of the clumsiness in his limbs. “Colonel Rhodes. What the hell are you doing here?”  


“I was in the area.” Rhodey steps down into the living room, expression neutral as he takes in the mess of torn envelopes, pill bottles, and half-empty nutrition replacement drinks strewn about the place. He’s out of uniform, clean-cut and wholesome as usual. “Obadiah called, and I thought I’d stop by and see what’s up. Also, I got your voicemail.”

“I didn’t mean to send that.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Rhodey shifts his weight from one leg to another, the only tell of his discomfort with the situation. “Are you up for lunch?”

-

They order pupusas and eat them on the balcony. Tony picks at his curtido and watches the water. The smell of fried corn flour had sparked his appetite, his eye strangely caught by the red glimmer of salsa—but then the chewy dough, cheese, and loroco had turned to paste in his mouth, and he couldn’t swallow.

Rhodey is having no such trouble with his revueltas. At least he can still hold his stomach around Tony. Count that as a blessing. Tony feels nauseous and nauseating, disgusting and disgusted. A hint of cooked pork assaults his nostrils, and he has to turn his head to the side to keep from projectile vomiting on the patio furniture.

Drugs are weird, especially psych meds. He’s taken these specific benzos before, but never antipsychotics, and together they’re ten times worse than the barbiturates. It’s like there’s a hole in his brain letting everything out. He starts thoughts and can’t finish them, keeps refocusing in the moment.  


It’s a beautiful day in Malibu, as always. That’s why he lives here. He feels the sun on his hair, the slight sting of salt on his face; he hears waves crashing, airplanes flying low, Rhodey chewing beside him. Condensation leaks down his water glass and over his hand. He reaches after an idea, but it’s gone.

“Earth to Tony. You with me?”

Tony avoids Rhodey’s gaze. “You have salsa on your chin.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes and grabs a napkin. “Come on, man. Did you hear even half of what I just said?”

“Uh,” Tony tries. “No?”

He feels Rhodey appraising him. “I’ve never seen you like this. Honestly, it scares me a little. Is your prefrontal lobe still intact?”  


“You haven’t seen me for a while.” Miles down the beach, someone’s flying a kite; Tony watches it bob through the sky. “Hey, why don’t we talk about you for once?”

Rhodey snorts. “Now I know you’re high.” He indulges Tony anyway.

-

A nurse and a personal assistant come to check on Tony while Rhodey’s still there. The three of them have a whispered conference with J.A.R.V.I.S. in the kitchen that Tony is too out of it to eavesdrop on. He struggles to object when the nurse insists on drawing blood, right there in front of Rhodey. At least they leave the urine sample for later.

Rhodey takes his leave, of course threatening to return. His parting hug is still stiff, but some of his discomfort has fallen away. Tony conjectures, a trifle bitterly, that it’s because he considers Tony handled.  


He falls asleep on the couch after the nurse leaves. In the bowels of the house, the assistant is vacuuming something, probably out of guilt. His last thought before unconsciousness overtakes him is that he might as well get used to being handled.

-

He dreams again of fire and dry bones.  _ I couldn’t protect you. _ Grief and regret, a neverending longing, a great yawning void that can never be filled. The blackness of deep space. Claw marks in blind stone. They must have him on some real shit, Rhodey said.  


**_Awake._ **

Up and walking, he still feels like he’s asleep. It's a different feeling than being under from the meds. Peace and quiet, three a.m. The front door is alarmed, so he slips out to the balcony. The glass walls are too high and smooth to climb. He doesn’t notice that he’s climbed one until he’s on the other side.

Scrub brush scratches his ankles. Rocks cut into his bare feet. He should be nervous, at the edge of the cliff; somehow, though, the height doesn’t bother him. He clambers around the perimeter of his home until he reaches the street, the gate, the crest of the hill. Dew wets the bottom of his sweatpants, mixing with dust to make sticky smears of mud.

The greater Los Angeles area stretches before him, an endless sea of concrete and light pollution mirroring the Pacific at his back. Overhead, the waxing moon sits like a smudge of white paint on faded asphalt. Three a.m., peace and quiet. Tony starts his descent down the winding road to the city.

It’ll be a trek to get anywhere, but he doesn’t care. Some mad energy animates him, dull and sleepy but still vital, burning with an unknown need. He feels—

**_Hungry._ **

And there is so very much for him to eat.


End file.
